I met someone from sixty years ago online and now I've been shut off

@ossobuco,

dunno. I'm not a gmail user. Is there usually a visible spam folder?

@DrewDad,

I pretty much doubt that. Why would the whole last bunch of posts between us just be obliterated.

I'm not ordinarily paranoid, more the lackadaisical type.
We had interesting fathers. But he's around eighty and I'm seventy.
I'm still lackadaisical, but my antennae are up. Maybe us children are on lists.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

what kind of filter?

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@JPB,

Found the spam file; we weren't in there.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Sorry, I was hoping that was it.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I'll try one more time.

I can see one of the other of our posts going away. Not every smidgeon of all of it. This was a fair sequence (he started out distrusting my photos). I took my photos when I was eight. Talking about that is how we connected. I think he started out thinking mine were a version of his.

We had both lived there. I like this guy (I think).

We were just getting into family history when our emails disappeared.
I have photos of his mother, for godsakes.

"Things disappearing from your own email account" is not the act of his relatives unless one of those relatives is a pretty good hacker.

Sounds like a technical glitch of some sort. I'd be complaining to Google about your missing emails.

Chances are he still has the full record of the conversation on his own email account, and is wondering why you've stopped sending emails.

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@JPB,

The link is not enlightening.

I distrust that all of our emails and no others are missing.

girl not happy.
I'm aware I sound paranoid.

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@ossobuco,

In gmail, an exchange is threaded (I'm probably not using the right term). That is, there will be something in my inbox that says "John Doe (48)" which means that John Doe and I have exchanged a total of 48 emails on a single topic (he sent one, I replied to that, he replied to my reply, etc.), which are all gathered together. If that thread is deleted, all of the emails are deleted.

That seems to be what the person JPB quoted on the last thread is talking about.

I remember having something like that happen too, when I tried to forward something, maybe.

At any rate, I just don't see (which doesn't mean it's impossible, just that I personally don't see) how a third party would reach into your inbox and get rid of the emails you'd received. A very very tech savvy third party could do it I'm sure, but I'd really suspect a technical glitch over human intention.

1 Reply

@Rockhead,

I did find JPB's link, just now. Well, the emails that are missing aren't random.

of course they could be missing from stupidity on my part but, if they are, they are very specific, including some sent by both of us, and you know I'm not that smart.

I don't have a wig. I have naturally curly hair.

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@ossobuco,

Sounds like a threaded conversation was accidentally deleted or moved.

It's one of the reasons I don't like gmail. Things I want seem to disappear, and I can't get rid of things I don't want without getting rid of more than I want to get rid of . I went back to hotmail and yahoo and my isp's email. They're easier for me to manage.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I distrust that all of our emails and no others are missing.

makes a lot of sense if it was a continuous chain of emails between the two of you

1 Reply

Here's another discussion about a similar problem. It includes a link that you can use to try to recover your missing emails if your account was compromised.

Quote:

The first concern when messages are missing (especially if this has happened before) is that the account was compromised and contents deleted. The first step is to change your password and verify all your other security and account settings (see http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/#security (When you reclaim Your Account)). If the account was compromised, a request for recovery of the deleted messages can be made here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78353

Other possibilities include:
* Forwarding, filters, or access using POP/IMAP any of which could be deleting messages.
* Messages can also be deleted from other web-sites/tools/utilities through Authorizing applications & sites.
* Confusion on the difference between labels and folders when doing account cleanup.
* Using a view other than "classic" in Settings->Inbox can sometimes result in messages being hidden.
* In a Google Apps account it could a misconfigured retention policy: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=151128

Have you looked in the All Mail, Trash, and Spam labels for the missing information? Have you used the Search Mail function to try and find them?

Unfortunately, messages permanently deleted from Trash or Spam can not be recovered. Sorry.

Unexpected message loss is why some people do their own backups of their Gmail accounts. That way they can recover their information if something happens. http://gmail-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/gmail-backup.html

For more information see:
Try to find missing messages: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=8256
Recovering deleted messages: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78353
Recovering messages or contacts: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50208

1 Reply

@sozobe,

Tnx.
I just about never go to my gmail account. It's very unlikely I deleted one of this guy's missives.

Well, I'll see if I ever hear from him again.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

thanks.

My last email to him was my yahoo email address.

Hope it went through.

Or, he'll see his name here on a2k - maybe he'll remember this is where I posted the photo.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

Tnx.
I just about never go to my gmail account. It's very unlikely I deleted one of this guy's missives.

Right, the point is that the formatting means that it's relatively easy for a whole thread to be lost (for whatever reason), and then a whole string of emails are gone.

As in, it may be a glitch that lost the thread, but the thread is the reason that all of those emails to and from the same person are gone -- it makes more sense than it seems to.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

Ok, I'll stop being paranoid (which took some work) and move over to just pissed.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

I still want to talk with him.
with luck, clicking on this and that, I have his email.

I'll relegate gmail for a2k spam reports.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

with luck, clicking on this and that, I have his email.

Great!

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@JPB,

As I recall it, my problem had to do with POP access (which I never did understand).

I lost a whole series of emails with Seed, and couldn't get rid of about 5000 emails from some film group I'd joined. Buggery gmail.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

I think I knew what that meant once, but I'm over it.

Ok, thanks, that puts it in perspective.

1 Reply

I met someone from sixty years ago online and now I've been shut off

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